Performing open surgery on a patient is a great risk and is often followed by a long hospitalization time. Image guided surgery (IGS) enables minimally invasive procedures where surgical instruments are safely maneuvered with the help of imaging technology into the targeted area of the human body. Ultrasonography is an important imaging method used in IGS. By reconstructing a 3D volume from ultrasound scans, the internals of a patient can be visualized in ways not possible by scans alone, enabling image guidance and diagnostics. Both the reconstruction and visualization is computationally intensive, and it is desirable to see the constructed volume while it is being built.

This thesis will evaluate how GPUs can be utilized to perform 3D ultrasound reconstruction and visualization, with focus on obtaining high performance. An implementation of simultaneous reconstruction and visualization on the GPU using the new OpenCL architecture will be made and analyzed.